Is JavaScript Taking Over?

JavaScript was created in the early 1990s to add some life to web pages.Over the years it acquired new features and it is now possible to do a lot in the browser. But JavaScript is not only for the browser. Its influence has spread far beyond it.
Apple shunned Flash in favor of HTML5 (and, consequently, JavaScript). webOS uses a combination of JavaScript and HTML/CSS/JSON for app development. So does Chrome OS. With HP's plans to make desktops running webOS, JavaScript will make it to the desktop.

And Microsoft has recently announced that Windows 8 will come with a new programming foundation: letting developers build native apps with the same techniques they use for Web applications.

JavaScript is not only for UI development, it has penetrated the server side. Just look at Node.js.

So, has JS grown from an ugly duckling into an ugly duck? Will it soon become the lingua franca of application development? Will a combination of JavaScript and other technologies, standards, and libraries (HTML/CSS/JSON/Ajax/jQuery) deliver a promise that many have tried to achieve in the past: write once, run everywhere?